Our Bureau
New York
On December 10, ballots were picked up at the Hicksville post office by Dr. Srinivasan and Rekha Chichara. The ballots were loaded into cardboard boxes and sealed. Rekha. Chichara and Dr. Srinivasan signed across the box seals, with the date. On December 11 at Apna Ghar, Ms Chichara and Dr. Srinivasan carried in the sealed boxes and opened them in front of all the candidates and volunteers. Every 10th envelope coding was checked.
A tech system was put in place, such that the ballot could be seen in real time, on a closed-circuit monitor by the candidates and the volunteers. Total transparency was achieved. This is a FIRST for IALI! The formal count for the election of officers and Members at Large 2022 took place at Apna Ghar following the above pr0cedure. Once the election votes had been called out, the results were tallied three times by the members of the Election Committee and verified, according to a statement from Dr. Bhavani Srinivasan, Chair IALI Election Committee 2022.
On December 18, the formal results were announced at the IALI Annual General Body meeting. Members At Large in the order of votes received: Dr. Ramesh Gupta: 606; Dr. Abha Bhatnagar: 601; Mrs. Renu Kapoor: 600; Dr. Neeru Bhambri: 591; Mrs. Kiran Arora: 575; Mr. Vijay Khanna: 508; Mr. Ravindra Kumar: 502; Mr. Gary Sikka: 499; Treasurer Mr. Suresh Bhansal: 502; Secretary Mr. Pradeep Tandon: 482; Vice President Mr. Hargovind Gupta: 552; and President Mrs. Bina Sabapathy: 502.
The Election Committee gratefully acknowledged Munish Byala for his technical support to set up the closed-circuit monitoring and Bobby Kalote for use of Apna Ghar for the election proceedings.
